The enemy attacked. We didn't raise an army.
They won.
We didn't raise an army. There's something unwholesome in that -- why didn't we?
Because we talked ourselves out of forming one. It was easy to do. We just kept the conversation confined to the terms handed us by the enemy -- terms that concealed more than they revealed. It was a language trap from which we are only just now emerging.
Take that phrase -- the Culture War. Which culture, exactly, was under attack? Conservative culture? Eurocentric culture? Nice ambiguous terms. Our shyness about calling a spade a spade made it seem that something not terribly meaningful was under attack -- some ancient puritanical law, a regulation restricting smut on TV. Why form an army to stop that? And after all, we kept telling ourselves, maybe we have been a little narrow-minded, a little intolerant.
But that wasn't what the so-called Culture War was all about -- teaching us a little tolerance.
The enemy's objective was something altogether more vicious.
WHY THEY ATTACKED
The enemy waged a war to annihilate our culture because the moral basis of our culture -- Christian culture -- is an obstacle to the fulfillment of their ambition.
That basis is the profoundly rational charity Jesus had the beautiful courage to preach in a world of tribal conceits and ambitions and bigotries.
Charity -- that manly word is treated rather shabbily nowadays. In the wake of our defeat it gets trotted out mainly to describe giving money to the poor (or more precisely, to describe giving money to well-to-do strangers who promise to pass some of it along to whomever they think is poor).
But this is a mere shadow of the charity Jesus taught us.
In its more radical sense charity is that disposition of the heart that inclines a man towards concern for all his goods and those of all others, an inclination that moves him to consider all interests sympathetically and to do right by them so that no good is disregarded.
This profound charity is the fountain of those transcendently imaginative moral bonds between men called Reason and Justice. It is the framework that restrains the Rule of Rights in Christian culture, as it restrained the Rule of Rights -- at least theoretically -- at the Founding.
This charity-bounded framework of rights is an enemy of exploitative domination in all its forms. It shames the right of property when that right presumes to authorize chattel slavery or inhumane wages. It stands between the unborn and their murderers.
It stands opposed to the power-obsessed's crude notion of prosperity.
This profound charity's authority -- its living presence in our laws and our ways of life -- had to be destroyed in order to establish their Reign of the Cheap. That's what the Culture War was all about.
THEY WON
Roe v. Wade. Obligatory government-controlled schooling. Capitalism's Safety-Net State.
The enemy has succeeded in making it impossible for us to live fully and legally as believing Christians.
They've made it a crime for a father to defend his unborn child against murder. Grandparents, uncles, aunts, brothers, sisters, neighbors, all likewise now criminals if they dare to live their Christianity fully.
They've made it a crime for us to shield our children from their pernicious curricula.
They've made it impossible for one spouse to hold a marriage together legally by refusing to submit to the promiscuous, socially destructive, desires of the other.
We have no essential political ground left to defend.
WHAT NOW MUST WE DO?
Reversing defeat, taking ground, this is what fighting the Culture War means for us now.
Mere repulse is meaningless. It would have meant something 31 years ago, but not now. Now it's nothing but an antic gesture -- absurd when it isn't downright harmful.
The Defense of Marriage amendment, for instance.
"Marriage" -- the building block of civilization... which the laws of the several states currently allow either spouse to dissolve at will.
Precisely how are we defending marriage by demeaning the Constitution with an amendment reserving to mixed-sex couples the privilege of forming this now jello-like building block?
Antics.
FIGHT OR RECEDE?
Right now we have very little practical solidarity. Politically, we are a we only through wishful thinking. Recollection binds us more than anything else.
So, can we take any ground at all by fighting? And if we can't, then ought we to recede, as Paul Weyrich suggested several years ago?
For the sake of discussion, let's assume we can't take any ground by fighting. How do we recede, to where do we recede? I asked this when the idea of receding was first floated. I thought then, and I still think "receding" is merely an illusion.
We have no social, economic or political infra-structure into which we can recede. There are no modern-day catacombs. One can't shake the enemy's dust from one's sandals if one is always on enemy ground. And worse, the enemy profits by almost everything we do in our day to day life -- sooner, or later.
Watch TV -- the enemy profits. Does receding mean giving up cable and the satellite?
Listen to radio -- the enemy is buying that up, too. Give up radio?
Stay home on Election Day -- either Republicans or Democrats still win, both promising to advance the enemy's agenda quicker and further. Give up political life?
Many can't afford to homeschool. And those who can afford it still pay taxes which support the enemy-controlled school system. Can't recede her at all.
In the end, what does receding amount to? -- Cutting out many of the little joys and entertainments of life, and giving the enemy a freer hand to club us with.
Making life puny is not my idea of a good strategy.
So, we ought to make a fight of it. Whether we win or not, the fight will make our lives nobler.
* * *
How do we go about taking ground -- political ground? Right now we have very little practical solidarity. Politically, we are a we only through wishful thinking. Recollection binds us more than anything else.
However, the fact that we have no political ground left to defend means that if we are able to concert we can concentrate all our firepower on one target without fear of losing something somewhere else on the battlefield. And, there are some political issues that divide our significant electoral weight unevenly between the two major political parties.
In short, if we act as an army politically there are some issues on which our votes make the difference as to which political party comes to power. As an army we can be politically powerful -- whether we are the silent "majority," or not.
Also, concerting as an army with a specific political battle to fight will give us something around which to build the practical solidarity that will be vital over the long haul as we set about creating our own social, economic, and political infra-structure -- which will both weaken the enemy and strengthen us. This infra-structure will also give us a place to go should separation become the order of the day.
Is there, then, a political target we can choose that will inspire enough solidarity within our ranks to make us politically formidable?
Yes.
Roe v. Wade.
* * *
Re-asserting the right of the unborn to live; re-asserting their fathers' right to defend them against murder; re-asserting the right of society to defend them; re-asserting all the rights that were set aside by the majority decision in Roe v. Wade is a worthy premier engagement.
There are a passel of reasons for starting the fight on this ground. Here's just a few.
1) It is just. Children are being murdered every day.
2) Their murders can be shown graphically -- a powerful tool, as we saw in the partial-birth abortion debate. (No, that wasn't an instance of us fighting -- those children are merely being killed by other means now. The enemy placed a few cardboard tanks on the field and we threw rocks at the decoys. That's not fighting.)
3) We can bring a lot of money to bear in this fight. And we have a lot of money, don't forget that. Don't forget this either -- we can bring our money to bear by spending it, or by not spending it.
4) What little political solidarity we have, we have in this fight.
5) We can wage our fight in the Congress. That will settle something we need to settle -- whether those who claim to be our allies are actually our allies when we are fighting and not merely whining.
6) In this fight we can most dramatically re-assert the authority of profound charity as the boundary of rights. And after all, re-asserting this authority is the whole purpose of fighting back in the Culture War. Never forget that the Rule of Rights, unbounded by charity, can as easily produce Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia as Safety-Net State America. Things can get worse if we don't fight now.
CHARITY-BOUNDED RIGHTS
Rights. Rights. Rights. Do we even remember what the charity-bounded conception of rights is? If we are going to be fighting under its banner, we'd better make sure.
The charity-bounded "rights of man" are the charity-delimited behaviors that enable a man to attain all the ends established by his nature -- charity delimiting these behaviors so that they do not intolerably injure the usefulness of another man's charity-delimited behaviors in his like pursuit of happiness.
The implicit aim of this conception of rights -- and of the charity Jesus taught us -- is the mutual harmony necessary to mutual happiness. And to that end this political conception contains an assumption -- that there is resource available to the polity adequate to our mutual happiness.
Without this assumption the idea that government is instituted to secure the rights of all is a vicious jest -- for absent adequate resource men's rights would be in constant and unavoidable material conflict, and for some men murder and theft would be necessary and justifiable for the attainment of happiness.
This was the charitable assumption contained, but unspoken, in the notion of rights promulgated in the Declaration of Independence.
And fortunately, the territory comprised by the U.S. has always contained adequate resource for our mutual happiness -- which has kept the Declaration from being the grotesquerie it could be if it was iterated by a less charitable People in less propitious circumstances.
THE RIGHT TO ABORTION
Now, apply this conception of rights to abortion. You quickly discover the one case in which abortion is a right.
Killing another human being is a right in this case only -- when lethal force is the only practicable means of securing one's life.
Thus, abortion is a right when it is the only practicable means of preventing an unborn child from killing his mother. But this is the only case in which abortion is a right.
Abortion is not a right on the grounds that the mother will be unable to, or simply doesn't want to adequately provide for the child. This is so because of a standing offer our society makes -- namely, to adopt all unwanted American children. This flows from our assumption -- backed up by experience, so far -- that there are adequate resources in America for the mutual happiness of all Americans.
Nor is abortion a right in the case of rape or incest.
The argument that a woman has the right to lethally expel from her body a child who has entered it without her consent fails on the grounds of "excessive force." One may not kill a foundling infant as a means of removing him from one's foyer merely because one is distressed or inconvenienced by the temporary care of the child.
The "harmful psychological distress" argument fails on these same grounds. It is impossible to determine a priori whether the distress is caused by the memory of the rape, or by the unborn child who has resulted from the rape. This reasonable doubt about the cause of the distress makes the use of lethal force against the child an "excessive" resort.
Such are the demands of the profound charity that properly bounds the rights of man -- usually inconvenient, often more than a little painful.
There, now we are armed philosophically.
TO BATTLE STATIONS
The time has come for us to pressure our self-professed allies to move from lip-service to battle stations. Those who don't go to battle stations forfeit their claim to the word "ally."
And the battlefield ought to be the US Congress. For pressuring the Congress to contest this Supreme Court decision will make us politically formidable.
Happily, we do not need a highly-developed organization in place in order to bring this pressure to bear. This is important because we ought to start pressing right now --the party with a pro-life plank in its platform controls both legislative houses and the Presidency. We have a rare opportunity to take the inventory of this putatively pro-life party.
To apply this pressure we can individually bombard congressional Republicans and the President by internet, mail, and telephone. The many existing pro-life organizations can do likewise. We inform the Republican Party that we won't vote in the upcoming federal elections for any of its candidates if the Party does not force a vote on pro-life legislation that if passed effectually sets aside Roe v. Wade and excludes the courts from review.
If the Republican Party won't bring this legislation to a vote during this Congress, then it must pay the price for its 31-year pro-life masquerade. If it wants our support to keep it in power, it must be actively pro-life -- right now.
Yes, if the Republicans fail us our concerted refusal to vote for them in the 2004 elections may result in victory at the polls for Democrats.
What if it does?
We have no essential political ground left to defend.
As Republican strategists like to point out, the Republicans have cleverly fulfilled all the election promises made by Democrats, thereby taking all the Democrats' issues away from them. In short, a majority of Republicans are now nothing more or less than effectual Democrats.
As for the so-called War On Terrorism -- it will continue to be waged, ham-handedly, no matter what mixture of the current crop of candidates is in office.
The time for excuses not to fight has passed.
But I suspect the Republican Party leadership will bring pro-life legislation to a vote -- if we are energetic in our demand.
Even if they don't want it to pass, it's unlikely they will risk the loss of the Presidency and congressional control just to avoid bringing this issue to a vote. After all, they know that they can probably muster enough votes to defeat the bill between the avowedly pro-abortion-on-demand Republicans and those lukewarm pro-lifers who can be induced to vote against the legislation in order to avoid a power struggle with the Supreme Court.
From our standpoint, a public congressional debate on the fallacious "right" to abortion-on-demand gives us an incalculably valuable opportunity. It allows us to escape at least partially from the enemy's language-control apparatus and get our powerful charity-bounded conception of rights back into public view -- through C-span if through no other media. This is a debate the pro-abortion army has labored mightily to keep from the public. It has been a loser for them in the legislative arena -- which is why they did an end run in 1973. Putting them on the defensive publicly is a step towards reversing our defeat.
Will we win this first engagement outright? Only time will tell. But the climate has never been as favorable.
What is our second target?
The enemy will find out when it's hit.
All the enemy needs to know now is that the worst thing that could have happened to them has happened -- we awoke to the fact they don't want us to live fully as believing Christians.
But we will. If we start raising an army.
THE END